Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian doctors may be enticed to
return to the U.S. after President Barack Obama’s health-care
legislation passed earlier this year, expanding care.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows how more physicians have moved
to Canada from the U.S. than left over the past six years,
capped by the biggest net change in 16 years in 2009, according
to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

Now, with stretched resources at home and Obama’s health-care law giving 32 million people access to Medicare -- just shy
of Canada’s population of 34 million -- the risk is that doctors
again decide to leave, Jeff Turnbull, the president of the
Canadian Medial Association and chief of staff of The Ottawa
Hospital, said in an interview.

“I’m afraid that as you start to provide increasing
services to those Americans that need care, once again America
is going to start to pull Canadian doctors back,” Turnbull
said. “The balance is going to shift. You’ll see doctors
move.”

Obama’s $940 billion health-care legislation, which was
signed in March, represents the most sweeping changes to the
nation’s medical system since the Medicare program for the
elderly was created in 1965.

Canada hasn’t made major changes since 1968 with the
introduction of the national health insurance system. The Ottawa
Hospital has had to cancel about 500 surgeries so far this year
because of a lack of resources, Turnbull said.